Do you have an "edge" in your trading?

Pazienza said:
Kin ell dunno fer fooks sake mate bud :whistling. Its not rocket science tbh cba bud bless...;)

And no, I would not call the lower time frames random noise. I'd be surprised if anyone who made money trading thought that they were. Those that claim to and don't, on the other hand, I can easily see why they might take comfort from the thought that market movements are random noise...bless ;)
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I wholeheartedly agree...

BUT

Just because it's not noise, doesn't mean you can make sense of it at all times. I think this is where people stuggle with order flow.

For those that think it is noise watch the open on the ES for a few days and specifically watch the DOM and the Time & Sales right off the open. You will see that the market will open and probe up and down. Quite often, you will see it move in one direction and then - perhaps just 5 or 6 ticks above/below the open you will see the levels on the DOM thicken up and you will see all of the buying/selling being absorbed without it being able to tick up/down any more. This is a good time to take a reversal trade.

Yesterday saw an open at 1288, a probe up a few ticks then it moved back down through the open down to 1287.50 and a lot of contracts went through but price couldn't tick down any more. This all happened within the first minute. At 9:30:45 you could have got in long with a fill at 1288.

So - this is an entry where you have
1 - An expectation that something will happen anyway
2 - Action on the DOM/T&S to back that up

If you were looking at a 5 minute candlestick chart, all this would have been lost on you. Conversely, if you expect meaning from this information all the time, then I don't think you will get it. At least I don't.

Let's face it too - those guys with the big limit orders at 1287.50 and 1287.75 weren't using candlesticks but they are making a lot more money than most of us.

This setup will occur over and over and over again. It only takes you to watch the first few minutes too - sometimes it is VERY obvious that the market has hit a point it can't push through and will move back in the opposite direction.
 
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meanreversion said:
I knew it... something in my brain told me "that's not a gorilla, it's something else" but I didn't reach the right word.
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Actually - it could be a punk gorilla.

meanreversion said:
It was only about six months ago that I finally worked out the difference between tortoise and turtle, I must have been off the day they explained that at school.
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Probably explains why you drowned so many pet tortoises in your youth though doesn't it?
 
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Owned haha......
Health and fitness is critical in todays competitive world .
By going to the gym 6 days a week I have an edge in this zero sum game .
Great for the body ,great for the mind .
Sitting in front of your screen watching charts for long periods is not good for you .
Get out there and socialize ,play sport or join the gym .
You will feel better and you will make better decisions .
 
So exercising gives you an edge in this zero sum game? Please explain?


No dont:sleep:
 
I dont have an edge that im aware of.
Guess you need a good sample of trades to evaluate whether you have something.
I keep hearing people say 200 odd trades is a decent sample..??....

Im up to 60 trades on my latest style.
Maybe i'll evaluate my results in a few months when I have lots more trades under my belt....
 

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redart said:
I dont have an edge that im aware of.
Guess you need a good sample of trades to evaluate whether you have something.
I keep hearing people say 200 odd trades is a decent sample..??....

Im up to 60 trades on my latest style.
Maybe i'll evaluate my results in a few months when I have lots more trades under my belt....
Click to expand...

Do you add journal-like entries in your spreadsheet to help correlate your trading success with your decisions?
 
HowardCohodas said:
Do you add journal-like entries in your spreadsheet to help correlate your trading success with your decisions?
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I document each trade on my excel spreadsheet which also states why I entered the trade.
Is that what you mean?
cheers
 
I’m obviously in the minority here thinking trading journals and trading performance statistics are a complete waste of time.

I didn’t always of course. Back then I was told they were the secret to success. But no matter how hard I obsessed over the journal and however much time I spent on it, my trading method didn’t actually alter that much for the better. What little time I could spend trading, as maintaining and enhancing that journal was a top priority.

Same with performance statistics. Got almost OCD with them and created legions of spreadsheets to compile, assess and compare my various trading ratios and data. What with these and the journal, my trading had to move full-time, although the trading itself was still taking a back seat to this vital administrative endeavour.

Then I noticed that even as I changed my trading systems, for the better, it took an awful long time for the accumulated crap trades that preceded them to allow the performance to show the improvement themselves. Imagine a downward plunging equity curve and how much good news it’s going to take to turn it around. Downright discouraging. So I started re-engineering my performance data from a more recent point in time. Bit like Lloyds drawing a line under ‘Titanic’; and starting again.

When I looked back over my journal I realised I’d been concentrating on the wrong things, and had spent a lot of time noting down and annotating the notes about the wrong things. It was a fine journal though. I even considered having it bound. Giving up on it seemed almost sacrilegious, especially after all the effort.

Eventually though, I realised I had used these devices as a diversion to avoid recognising that what I was doing was not working. And neither the performance stats nor the journal were going to make it better. So I stopped. Got rid of it all and concentrated on my core business, which is trading, not journaling my trading and not monitoring the stats of my trading.

You are better off simply staring at a screen, discouraged, unhappy, bone weary and on the point of giving up, than you are thinking you’re making some form of progress by diligently writing up your journal or compiling your stats. You will eventually gain more of an insight through the former than you ever will through the latter.
 
redart said:
I document each trade on my excel spreadsheet which also states why I entered the trade.
Is that what you mean?
cheers
Click to expand...

Yep.

Do you review it periodically to determine if there are problems? And if there are problems do you try to figure out whether they are of your making or a failure of your trading strategy? And if it is a failure of the strategy whether it is due to a weakness in the strategy or to systemic market changes?
 
TheBramble said:
I’m obviously in the minority here thinking trading journals and trading performance statistics are a complete waste of time.

I didn’t always of course. Back then I was told they were the secret to success. But no matter how hard I obsessed over the journal and however much time I spent on it, my trading method didn’t actually alter that much for the better. What little time I could spend trading, as maintaining and enhancing that journal was a top priority.

Same with performance statistics. Got almost OCD with them and created legions of spreadsheets to compile, assess and compare my various trading ratios and data. What with these and the journal, my trading had to move full-time, although the trading itself was still taking a back seat to this vital administrative endeavour.

Then I noticed that even as I changed my trading systems, for the better, it took an awful long time for the accumulated crap trades that preceded them to allow the performance to show the improvement themselves. Imagine a downward plunging equity curve and how much good news it’s going to take to turn it around. Downright discouraging. So I started re-engineering my performance data from a more recent point in time. Bit like Lloyds drawing a line under ‘Titanic’; and starting again.

When I looked back over my journal I realised I’d been concentrating on the wrong things, and had spent a lot of time noting down and annotating the notes about the wrong things. It was a fine journal though. I even considered having it bound. Giving up on it seemed almost sacrilegious, especially after all the effort.

Eventually though, I realised I had used these devices as a diversion to avoid recognising that what I was doing was not working. And neither the performance stats nor the journal were going to make it better. So I stopped. Got rid of it all and concentrated on my core business, which is trading, not journaling my trading and not monitoring the stats of my trading.

You are better off simply staring at a screen, discouraged, unhappy, bone weary and on the point of giving up, than you are thinking you’re making some form of progress by diligently writing up your journal or compiling your stats. You will eventually gain more of an insight through the former than you ever will through the latter.
Click to expand...

Top posting, in particular this bit..
 
I'm not entirely sure I agree Bramble as the post suggests a reflection on the path you should have taken rather than the one you did. Armed with this information, would you really have taken a different course?

Even imparting wisdom of this kind to others is likely to be lost on them because of context.

Journalling is a good vehicle for forcing you to assimilate in a coherent sense what has just happened - this might be psych, set-up, whatever. The more you understand and become enlightened, the less value it will ultimately provide in this sense. The value of why I journal has changed dependent on my needs. Now it's about consolidating screen-time. 12 months ago it was about why I impulse trade. I'm sure in 12 months time it may be different again.

Horses for courses.
 
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